The After Future

Mark: Hey Nick give it a rest! These dials are going to wear out! You keep turning them over and over.

Nicholas: I just know the answer is somewhere in here!

Mark: And what answer is that?

Nick: I’ll let you know when I find it!

Mark: Well Nick you’re extremely gifted but sometimes I feel like you’re the dumbest smart person I know. Come out for drinks with us!

Nick: Alcohol is a poison and you just store it as fat, so no thanks!

Mark: See? There you go again! No wonder you don’t get out, just do me a favor and get some sleep?

Nicholas keeps moving these rudimentary dials as a way to discover something. The super computer spits and hisses and struggles to print from its dot matrix. Paper Jams, Nick is not pleased but he feels he is close. He clutches his heart-shaped locket every time he feels like giving up. Deep down Nicholas feels like he has been deceived somehow. This technology with a small circular screen limits his abilities to discover what he only intuitively seeks. It only frustrates him more but he just clutches the locket harder. Nick lays down…

Nicholas lays on the floor and falls fast asleep on the cold computer lab floor.

Mark: Nick? Jesus man! Did you sleep in the lab again?

Nick: No… I was just resting my eyes.

Mark: You reek, hit the shower. It's early enough that you’ll be the only one there for a while. I should have this paper jam done before the Boss has an aneurysm over their expensive equipment.

Nick hovels to the shower room, feeling defeated and frustrated he isn’t any closer to his discovery. Nick proceeds to take off his locket and places it in his locker along with his clothing. A raucous group of executives head into the locker room. It's become common practice here to sleep overnight. This is no place for a relationship beyond the Computing Company (T.C.C.).

Nick: Oh god… not them…

Nicholas hurries to shut off the water, he barely has time to soap up and wash. Not being one for confrontation, Nick prefers to not interact with the executives. Nick always was a timid gangly fellow. Didn’t leave much room for self esteem. Nicholas always compared the executives to frat boys, their exploits are stuff of tabloid. Working for an up and coming tech company in 1972 has its advantages, like lawyers.

Executive: Oh look guys! It's Saint Nick! I want some “snow” for Christmas Mr. Claus!

Nick: Don’t quit your day job… no really you depend on the benefit of non disclosure agreements.

Executive: Listen you dweeb! We run this place! And when we leave we run the Society! Do you understand?

Nick: I’d say “Yes” but I sometimes wonder if your brain can process human language beyond a grunt.

Executive: The fuck do you mean? Boys I think we have failed to communicate here! What’s this stupid locket?

Nick: NO!

Nick’s heart sank… his prized possession was good as gone. His colleague, a disgraced Evolutionary Biologist, Mark only works here because of what one of the executives did to retain his services. When Mark felt what T.C.C. had offered was laughably low despite a new interest in computer science. The Executive interviewing him made a false accusation at his Alma Mater of Oxford University. With claims of inconsistent and unethical practices, he was done as an evolutionary biologist. Executives sought his expertise out not for the company, but for the egos of the higher management. They don’t take “no” for an answer in any aspect of their lives, and Nick knew this.

Executive: What’s the matter? You’re gonna cry?! Cry on, we own you! We own everything! Stock just jumped last night, I made more in 1 second than you will make your entire life!

Nick just leaves and knows fighting would just make them act out more, the fact they could get an Evolutionary Biologist to comply with their egos said it all. Telling a group of sociopaths that they’re savants because of a societal structure… that’s the ultimate tragedy. At least that’s what Nick thought… before they helped themselves to his locket. Nick puts his clothes on slowly, the Executives leave hooting and hollering like wild Chimps. He walks back to the lab, but less animated to do work.

Mark: What happened?!

Nick: It's nothing…

Said Nick with his posture downward. He fights back the tears but it's no use, the spirit always tells the truth of the soul.

Mark: They took it didn’t they?

Nick: No… leave it…

Mark: Those sons of bitches! I SHOULD’VE STOOD UP TO THEM! I SHOULD’V…

Nick: LEAVE IT!…

Mark pauses, he’s never seen Nick snap like that before. It was quite unnerving.

Mark: Alright… Let’s get back to work, we don’t want to give those overgrown chimps a reason to come back and meddle around.

Nick: Promise me…

Mark: Sure, what am I promising?

Nick: Promise me you help me discover what I’ve been trying to discover since I started working here.

Mark: I promise.

He knew he wanted to work on computers, he felt the society had severely limited its ability. Fighting over the scarcity of food and land. When with the spirit of technology promising a future of surplus. Post Graduation Nick met someone, “the one” as all the romantic fiction he read had him believe. Nick was never one to approach a member of the opposite sex. It was not his nature to go after. But she took interest in him. He met her at the food court near T.C.C. in the mall.

Renee: Hi! I’m Renee!

Nick: Hi…

Renee: What’s the matter? Do I make you nervous?

Nick: I’m just not used to talking to people…

Renee: Well how can you get better at something you never practice?

He couldn’t keep his eyes off her, he felt a burning desire inside him he never felt before. More than his vision for the future of society, she became his future. Nick stops the reminiscing of his past, it's too painful to go back, his work today is important. Saint Nick is about to perform a miracle.

Mark: Alright Nick, I moved all the tapes into the machine and fixed the jam from earlier.

Nick: Thank you Mark, I don’t deserve you.

Mark: Don’t mention it, imagine a world where we all got what we deserve?

Nick: Alright Mark I got it from here, I’ll let you know if I find anything out.

Mark: Okay I’ll head out, I’d ask you to come with us to the bar but I know the answer already.

Nick: About time you figured it out.

They both laugh, how on earth did they both end up here? Societal tragedy, the antisocial among us rule. Nick sits in his chair, he leans back and puts his hands on the back of his head with his elbows sticking out. He stares at the Calendar at the wall while the Supercomputer churns and struggles to execute the command Mark and Nick set up earlier. Nick stares at the Calendar closer….

Nick: 1972…

Nick feels like something about the year speaks to him. He can’t quite place why it feels strange, or off to him. But he knows this answer he seeks is somewhere there. T.C.C. was an up and coming tech company. It was under scrutiny for buying out other companies in the area when Nick joined nine years ago. Nick thinks back to how he thought he was the one that could solve the gap of technology and life. Nick feels that it was just a foolish dream of a young Computer Scientist. Nick felt it was odd that a company like T.C.C. could have had so many breakthroughs in such a short amount of time. Just short of an alien crash being reverse engineered, Nick didn’t think it was plausible. Not to mention the people who ran the company, not exactly a room of Nobel laureates.

Nick: I know I’m close, Renee I’m close.

He speaks with no one in the room, he never used to believe in the idea of the spiritual. But when he met Renee he knew there was more to this life. More than the mechanical. More than his bleak outlook on life. Nick drifts into sleep, he has a premonition of sorts. A runaway greenhouse effect on Earth and Nick is in the middle of the calamity. Dreams never seem to make sense until they do, Nick keeps teleporting throughout his childhood homes. Neighborhoods on fire, people robbing during orange daylight, who knows when the last blue sky was seen.

Nick: AH!… oh god…

Nick wakes up abruptly, he keeps having this recurring dream. He stares at the calendar again, ever focused on the year of 1972”. This time with his heart pounding, Nick clutches where his locket used to be. He is reminded of what he’s lost, this time twice.

Nick: What the….

The Supercomputer is going haywire! This is what Nick wanted… so he thought. Nick felt if he overwhelmed the system, the system would collapse and reveal to him what his intuition told him to seek. The Spirit always tells the truth in time. The machines go into overdrive, motors failing. Printer starts sparking lighting the paper on fire from the friction of fast paced machinery. This is it, this is the moment. A spark catches the calendar. Nick runs to the fire extinguisher and sprays down everything.

Nick: What have I done!

Defeated yet again. No closer to his answer, so he thought. He sees a marking with binary behind the calendar. Nick runs to the storage room, he wheels a rudimentary computer.

Nick: I swear I wish we didn’t have to contend with this junk technology.

Nick is frustrated, he has no choice now. He’s either done as a Computer Scientist forever or he is about to discover the greatest secret. He’s unsure which. He punches the binary sequence branded on the steel post behind where the charred calendar stood. The combination of the fire and the extinguisher exposed the cheap drywall T.C.C. used.

Nick: God in heaven…

He can’t believe it. Nearly a decade into this, he finally found the secret.

Nick: All this technology! All of it! Merely a stage to cover up mistakes!

Nick grabs the fire extinguisher and slams it into the computer consoles. He is beside himself, nine years gone. He sacrificed his only soulmate for his work. Renee couldn’t handle what his obsession had done to him. He kept the locket he had of her, the locket that the executives now possess. But not any more. Nick runs back to the closet where he wheeled the computer to decipher the code on the steel beam’s binary branding.

Nick: It's time T.A.F.

A blue light glows from a dark corner of the room, it's not well lit due to the fires from earlier shorting the panels. It's only a matter of time before the executives scramble from their comfortable offices above. Nick figures he only has mere minutes before they come. Before they found out their R&D budget went towards an android Nick had built.

Nick: T.A.F! My premonition was correct! This isn’t 1972! It's 3301! This society! A farce!

Nick felt vindicated, at last a society of machines as he dreamed would rule instead. Nicholas always felt that human beings were the sex organs of machines, of Artificial Intelligence. Many Professors Nick learned from, theorized this time was not true. Many civilizations ago mankind had done a great reset due to ecological disaster. These men later disappeared after publishing these theories. Nick knows he just scratched the surface with the code he just discovered.

Nick: The true techonology is here! And I will find it!